Non-religious, socialist societies are happier

[_Daniel Peterson]

Language is normally used for the communication of meaning - even in Academia (UT), I believe. Failure to use a language register appropriate to the context of communication suggests one is aiming to communicate something other than meaning, such as, for instance, one's amazingly high cultural level.

That was, as DCP may have guessed, my point.

I'm sorry that I overestimated my audience.

[_moksha]

Do they suggest that happiness extends from a vengeful God you have to assuage rather than a loving God that you love back? Probably so if they are advocates for conservativism.

Clear evidence that non-conservatives are at least as prone to inaccurate stereotyping as conservatives are.

Amusingly, Peter Schweizer's book actually touches on precisely this liberal stereotype about conservatives. On the basis of peer-reviewed social science data. Fascinating.

Yes, I stereotype and it is fascinating. Now what about the question?

[_Daniel Peterson]

The answer to your question, of course, is No.

As you would probably have known already, if you weren't laboring under the burden of your false stereotype.

[_EAllusion]

You have to be extremely careful with studies that use simple self-report data to make conclusions about levels of happiness. Surveys asking people to report their level of happiness are notoriously suspect to biases in that reporting.

I'm from one of the most liberal cities in the US - Madison, WI. I know a fair amount of immigrants who have lived in different areas of the US. They often say that we natives are some of the friendliest, happiest people they've met. One thing that makes them say this is if you walk down the street, people are always smiling and saying hello to one another. It's true. If I walk down state street, chances are I'll smile and say hello to random people and people will return the favor. The thing is, I understand this to be good manners. Even if I'm not happy, it's still second nature for me to act this way. It's just part of my cultural background from my particular socioeconomic status in this part of the country. For a person not familiar with this cultural expectation, they might get the wrong impression about how happy some people are. There's a disconnect between what they think measures happiness and actual happiness. I have a friend from Alabama who says that where she is from, it is considered bad to express being unhappy. On a personal level, that's odd to me, but I understand this is prevalent in some subcultures.

Well, it turns out that there are all different levels and types of pressure in various cultures and sub-cultures about how happy one should say they are and be. And these phenomena have an influence on self-report surveys.

[_beastie]

Self-reporting something as ambiguous as happiness is also heavily influenced by context. A book that I recently read (Kluge) talked about a study done about this very issue. The experiment was conducted by asking two groups of students two questions, although in different orders, depending on the group. One question was: how is your love-life? The second question was: how happy are you? (going by memory, paraphrasing) The group that was asked about their love-life first was far more inclined to rate their happiness lower. The group that was asked about their happiness first, and then their love life, rated their happiness higher.

Lesson: lots of people's love lives suck! And, of course, context matters.

[_Droopy]

Hmmmm.

The numerous studies and extensive research summarized in Prof. Arthur C. Brooks's Gross National Happiness: Why Happiness Matters for America--and How We Can Get More of It (New York: Basic Books, 2008) and Peter Schweizer's Makers and Takers: Why Conservatives Work Harder, Feel Happier, Have Closer Families, Take Fewer Drugs, Give More Generously, Value Honesty More, are Less Materialistic and Envious, Whine Less . . . and Even Hug Their Children More than Liberals (New York: Doubleday, 2008) seem to point in precisely the opposite direction.

I've never read either of those books, but I don't think I'll ever even pick up the second one you mentioned. Its title simply reeks of partisan hackery. Perhaps "Peter Schweizer" is the nom de plume of Ann Coulter.

Its already a kind of mark of the orthodox leftist that he or she doesn't read much, if at all, outside his or her own ideological cubicle. No mystery here.

If Sweden were our 51st state, it would be the poorest state in the Union, poorer than Mississippi. Galloping social pathologies there, including drug use, high divorce rates, unwed motherhood, and youth suicide preceded ours by some time, being well ahead of us as early as the late sixties.

When I was there, in 1971, as a 12 year old, the entire country, including the rest of the Scandinavian countries, and the Netherlands, were quite literally swimming in pornography. Billboards, window posters, bookshops and news stands, it was as if entire peoples had literally given almost their entire media culture over to the production of erotic stimulation. We had porn here then, but I had never conceived of anything remotely like that, and particularly its unrestricted public nature.

Combine that with stagnant and near stagnant economies, high unemployment, and prohibitive costs of living, and one can see why all the porn and drug usage. Bread and circuses for the masses as the rulers feed from the labors of those same masses.

We are in this same boat here, it should be said, but not quite as advanced...yet.

[_Droopy]

Does he go to dinner at the White House much, d'you reckon?

How's your buddy Hugo doing these days Chap?

[_Droopy]

I hope that you'll forgive me for being less than excited at the prospect of spending a week or two out of my few summers on this planet engaged in slogging through hundreds of pages of dogmatic slop which will, more than likely, result in the death of a few thousand neurons from my frontal lobe.

Translation: you are a typical, textbook, stereotyical leftist who assiduously avoids anything outside the accepted, orthodox ideological template that placates your self satisfied moral hubris and massages your inflated sense of intellectual superiority (in holding to the correct ideology).

You haven't read the book, yet you know it is clap trap simply from reading...the title.

Please don't feel put out if I don't take you seriously, I'm only doing so because I care.

By the way, have you read The Road to Serfdom? That would be standard for a leftist who really was concerned with a serious understanding of the ideas of his ideological opponents.

[_Droopy]

Of course, the reason I pointed out that he's a fellow at Stanford who draws on probably considerably more than a hundred peer reviewed academic studies -- I haven't actually counted them -- to support his points was to deflect any charge, by somebody who hasn't even seen the book, that it's merely "dogmatic slop."

It is, as I say, heavily documented, and the breadth of his reading was, to me at least, quite impressive.

I just finished some more dogmatic slop last month, one of which, one of the sloppiest in fact, was Russel Kirk's Rights and Duties. Right now I'm working on The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire, by Brian Crozier. Countless footnotes in that one, but, he's a conservative, so just ignore it as the dogmatic gruel it must be (and its a big book, which will make it all the more daunting to the average liberal, raised on a steady diet of Cliff Notes and Time...).

[_Tarski]

When I was there, in 1971, as a 12 year old, the entire country, including the rest of the Scandinavian countries, and the Netherlands, were quite literally swimming in pornography. Billboards, window posters, bookshops and news stands, it was as if entire peoples had literally given almost their entire media culture over to the production of erotic stimulation. We had porn here then, but I had never conceived of anything remotely like that, and particularly its unrestricted public nature.

Well, I was there for quite a while in the 90s. I went on long walks and travelled around using public transportation.
I saw a stunningly beautiful country, nice people, no sign of poverty that I can recall. I also do not remember any pornography. Of course, I might not be as sensitive as poor Coggy.